Our Man in Abiko, a British blogger in Japan, sends a tweet calling for contributions to a book of shorts stories of life in the aftermath to raise funds for relief efforts in Japan. Within 15 hours, he receives 79 mini essays, photos and illustrations.

#Quakebook, as the book is also known by its Twitter hashtag, is a story about the triumph of good will and the power of social media. It is a wonderful story about how 300 strangers came together to produce a collection of 89 stories about people's experiences of the Japan earthquake and tsunami. It was all done in one week. It is all for charity. Roberto De Vido, who managed the project, spoke to liberal sprinkles about the experience but first, this is how it all started:

Our Man In Abiko received an overwhelming response. Some 300 contributors, editors, designers, translators and volunteers helped get the book ready for publication in one week. By March 25, there was a 30,000-word crowdsourced collection of 87 stories (now 89) from victims in Japan as well as people in other parts of the world who were affected by the tragedy. Nearly 200 pieces of work were submitted. The contributors include artist-musician Yoko Ono and sci-fi writer William Gibson. The story unfolded on Twitter #Quakebook.

* * * interview with Roberto De Vido, who managed the #Quakebook project * * *
(scroll down to find out about another Twitter movement that sprouted after the quake)

Why did you get involved?

I got involved because I had a casual acquaintance with Our Man and once the editing, design and layout was done, he began looking around for people who had the skills to get the book published, and noticed. I've got 22 years of experience in the communications business here in Asia and maybe I am the only communications guy he knows, so he asked me if I would help with publicity. After a week or so, he asked me if I would be willing to put my two decades of experience as an entrepreneur to use managing the project overall.

Additionally, of course, I got involved because I live here and care about the country and people, and because like Our Man, I am neither a doctor nor a helicopter pilot, and have often found that I can help most by telling the story to a wider audience.

What do you think the #Quakebook story says about social media and how it can be harnessed?

I think social media is like anything: In the right hands, it can be an amazing tool. In the wrong hands, well, you've got however many million people playing Farmville, and informing one another of the details. To be honest, like many people, I have been uncertain about the value of Twitter. It's maybe more valuable to me than many people because I work from home, in a village a reasonable distance from the Big City, tens of thousands of kilometers from my native country. It's a connector, and I've met a few good people thanks to it.

What it has done, though, in the context of Quakebook, is connect people who care about an issue. It's connected contributors, who have wanted to share their stories, and it has connected the storytellers – the editors and translators and designers. When we decided to create a Japanese edition, rather than commissioning a translator to march through 89 submissions, a handful of translators apportioned the work among themselves, named a project leader, and a few days later, are nearly done. It's a revolutionary way of working. It's crowdsourcing. It's worth noting that Quakebook is an all-volunteer project, and that no one is being paid. Can this be done in the commercial context as well? I'm sure it can, and that it can be done well. To me Twitter has shown itself to be an incredible tool for crowd-sourcing talent.

What was the earthquake like for you personally

I was working at home in my one-story house in a fishing village an hour southwest of Tokyo when the quake hit. Here, of course, the strength was much less than up in Sendai and the rest of the Tohoku area. The quake was long (two minutes or so) and powerful, but the waves were long, and the quake was felt more as a powerful side-to-side swaying rather than the sharp bang we sometimes feel (as though a truck had slammed into the house).

Honestly I didn't find it frightening at all. In part because of the motion, perhaps in larger part because you have to be extremely unlucky in a one-story house in a developed country to die in an earthquake. When the second (or third) big one hit I went outside, just to play it safe. :-) And then, the power went out. I lost power for 12 hours, but almost no one else in the Tokyo area did. I could see lights all around the bay except in my area.

Another Twitter movement that sprouted after the March earthquake/tsunami disaster was Operation Yashima (link to website in Japanese only). In efforts to deal with the power shortage created by the nuclear emergency, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) introduced a blackout plan for the country. An unofficial campaign to conserve electricity took off on Twitter under the name Operation Yashima (hashtag #yashimasakusen), with people sending tweets calling for energy conservation so that more electricity can be sent to the affected areas. Operation Yashima gets its name from the popular anime/manga/video game franchise Neon Genesis Evangelion, in which the protagonist Evangelions defeat an invading robot enemy by using a weapon that taps into the Japanese electricity grid in an op named Yashima.

The Operation Yashima site has updates on projected power consumption, live twitter feeds. There is also a wiki. A Tumblr blog Setsuden has also been created where people share posters to help raise awareness of energy conservation. Here are some of them.

Hi Grace, sorry, you caught me on my rough draft ... but I'd accidentally hit publish ... I realized that I had it wrong. Sure, I'll put the button other there soon ... Cary's chomping at the bit for the computer! Have a great day.

Grace, nice interview and again, you are chuck full of information. I plan to post a link to your site on my blog too, but I may not get to it until a few days. Thanks for all your hard work in posting this.